Man enters guilty plea to hate crime in noose case

Aug. 15, 2008

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Jeremiah Munsen pleaded guilty Friday to a misdemeanor federal hate crime for last year's effort to intimidate a group of "Jena Six" civil rights marchers with hangman's nooses draped off the back of a truck.

U.S. District Judge Dee Drell set an Aug. 15 sentencing date for Munsen, 19. He faces maximum penalties of one year in federal prison and a fine of $100,000.

Munsen pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of hindering interstate travel of marchers from Tennessee who waited in downtown Alexandria for return-home buses after the massive Sept. 20 rally in Jena, where tens of thousands of marchers protested the judicial treatment of six black Jena youths.

Earlier on Sept. 20, Munsen and a teenaged accomplice had been drinking beer and fashioned nooses out of electrical extension cords.

In pleading to the lesser of the two charges he was indicted for in January, Munsen will not face the felony hate crime charge of conspiring to deprive the marchers of their civil rights by using a noose -- a deep-South symbol of hatred and murder by lynching -- to intimidate the crowd.

Munsen had faced 11 years in prison if convicted of both charges.

"It is a violation of federal law to intimidate, oppress, injure or threaten people because of their race and because those people are exercising and enjoying rights guaranteed and protected by the laws and Constitution of the United States," U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana Donald Washington said in a news release.

The teen, dressed in a dark dress jacket and tie, told Drell he had enrolled in public school night classes to pursue a high school diploma.

Since he was arraigned in February, he has moved out of his parents' Colfax home, where he grew up and went to school.

Unlike the February hearing, Munsen's parents were not in the courtroom Friday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bobbi Bernstein read the government's case against Munsen, which included a witness.

A third person, a teenager who testified before the grand jury in Shreveport, claimed he heard the plans to scare the black marchers, and declined to accompany Munsen and the other teen to downtown Alexandria. The teen also said he warned the two the stunt could land them in jail.